The other table broke up as Judy approached it. They all grouped around her to look and go into raptures. That was my first impression at least, but it was not quite correct. Bruce Applebury expressed no raptures, and he fell back a little from the group, seeming content to survey this marvelous gift to his bride at long range. This might have been nothing, of course, but the celebrated Applebury reserve. But there was none of that reserve about his cousin, Bill Grant. That young man didn’t even pretend to look. And he was scowling just as he had scowled that morning when he and Judy had come upon me in the summer-house. But nobody, of course, was paying any attention to him. Eventually the tumult subsided and people went back to their places. Bruce was watching Judy now. At all events it looked more like watching to me than like the lover’s gaze one might have expected. She seemed aware of his watchfulness and troubled by it, though not profoundly. Exasperated perhaps says a little more accurately what I mean. The brilliant glow of excitement was still in her face, and yet she had fallen silent. Once or twice she darted a quick look at Bill Grant, and at last she may have spoken to him under her breath. Anyhow I found myself presently watching him, so that I was on the spot, as it were, when his face changed too. It was like the lifting of a fog. I saw him look down the table toward Bruce, and then back at Judy. No, not at Judy; at Judy’s necklace. He was staring at it now like one fascinated, and to my amazement his face broke into a broad--but really a ferocious--grin. _His_ eyes were blazing now. I gave up trying to entertain the nice bridesmaid after that. It really didn’t matter. She was too excited about the necklace to care. But for myself, I was in exactly the plight in which old Eagle-Eye had found himself this afternoon. I had seen a drama played out under my eyes, and what it was all about I hadn’t the remotest idea. And I went home, once they’d got fairly to dancing, without any further illumination. Judy, as I said, never came near me. Whatever situation she’d foreseen which I might be useful in hadn’t come off. She had something else on her mind now. But this much I knew. Whatever Judy’s story might be, the necklace was somehow the nub of it. CHAPTER XI WHEN I CAME IN I got my cue at five minutes past four the next morning. I know what time it was since I had, a moment earlier, switched on my light and looked at my watch to see how much longer the night was going to last. The sky would begin turning gray before very long, I remember thanking heaven, and then perhaps I should drop off to sleep. It wasn’t ten seconds after I’d switched out my light and dropped back upon my pillow, when I heard my name spoken, almost beside my head, it seemed, in a whisper.